A couple cities in Nebraska are considering bypassing state law and increasing the teen wage to match the statewide $15 minimum.
When Nebraska increased its minimum wage to $15/hour, state lawmakers cited concerns from businesses that the mandate would make it harder to hire. They implemented a fix to create a slightly lower minimum wage requirement for entry-level teen employees.
New data analyzed by Employment Policies Institute (EPI) shows concerns about the negative impacts of the $15 wage were valid – and raising the teen minimum wage would deliver another blow to Cornhusker youth unemployment rates.
Methodology:
EPI calculated 12-month rolling average teen unemployment rates for the latest month of data at the time of release, a method often used by economists to reduce the impact of outliers in the data, since the Census Bureau surveys are based on individual responses.
Average teen unemployment for May 2026 was then compared with 12-month averages for the same month in previous years to eliminate seasonal trends that aren’t due to policy changes.
EPI found:
- Average teen unemployment skyrocketed to 9.93% in May 2026 (the latest available data at the time of publication) right as teens began searching for summer jobs. (To further confirm that May was not an outlier, we looked at March and April, where the percent change from 2023 was similarly high.)
- Nebraska has seen the largest average unemployment rate spike in the country during this period: from May 2023 to May 2026 (as the state has raised its minimum wage from $9 to $15 an hour) the average teen unemployment rate more than doubled.
- Additionally of note: A recent survey we conducted found that three-quarters of surveyed American economists say that a $15 minimum wage like Nebraska’s may cause significant job losses for teens.
Rebekah Paxton, research director at EPI had this to say about the new data:
“Cornhusker teens are competing for fewer jobs this summer than they were several years ago. Since the minimum wage began increasing in 2023, youth unemployment in Nebraska has more than doubled, marking the largest spike in the country. The state tried to implement a fix – but undoing these protections in Omaha would only make the situation worse for local teens.”